Microsoft getting early start on future Internet

WASHINGTON (AP) - Microsoft Corp., late to the party in the earliest days of the Internet, isn't taking any chances on the next generation of the worldwide computer network.

The software giant is joining the research effort to help build the future of the Internet. It becomes the latest corporate partner of the Washington-based University Corporation for Advanced Internet Development, which is coordinating the research among more than 150 universities nationwide.

Microsoft's involvement, along with a minimum pledge of $1 million, was expected to be announced later today. Other partners already include IBM Corp., Cisco Systems Inc. and 3Com Corp.

The project, called Internet2, is aimed at creating an ultra-fast, experimental computer network with speeds 45,000 times faster than the best telephone modems people now use to surf the Web.

``What we want to see is the high-bandwidth applications become heavily used,'' said Rick Rashid, vice president of Microsoft Research. ``The goal here is to create a spawning ground for new ideas.''

The fast network is used solely by academics and other professional researchers, with no way for home users to dial in. But its benefits are expected to trickle down to consumers in just a few years, as experts discover ways to use unprecedented data transmission speeds.

Microsoft's relatively early investment in the project stands in contrast to the company's failure to predict the significance of the commercial Internet until late in 1995, when Chairman Bill Gates announced in an industry speech: ``We're hard-core about the Internet.''

By then, pioneer Netscape Communications Corp. had already established a foothold with its popular Web browser, foreshadowing the ``browser wars'' between the rivals.

Microsoft's research offices, at its campus outside Seattle, will be physically hooked up to the network through the nearby University of Washington, which is already connected.

Douglas Van Houweling, president of the group organizing Internet2, noted Microsoft's expertise designing software applications and operating systems, which allow computers to communicate over data networks. The company's Windows software runs most of the world's computers.

``Microsoft is a major presence,'' Van Houweling said. ``We very much want to work together with Microsoft to make sure that every place it makes sense, their directions and our directions fit together,'' he said.

Some industry rivals and the government have accused Microsoft of exerting too much influence over the commercial Internet.

But Microsoft and Internet2 officials, including some other corporate partners, said there was no risk that the software giant will unduly influence the next Internet in ways that benefit only Microsoft.

``This is an opportunity to share research, share ideas before they become battlegrounds for products,'' Rashid said. ``It gives everybody the opportunity to learn together, to move the state of the art together faster than if we were working independently. ... It's our intention to work together.''

``Internet2 is a research program,'' he said. ``This is a very different activity than a product development effort. I don't think there's any concern here, and we're very excited that Microsoft is coming to the table.''